"To be honest, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would think you were definitely insane."
Staring at the charred battlefield before him, the man spoke with emotion. He was none other than the commander of the resistance—the man placed at the very top of Skynet's blacklist: John Connor.
"In fact, I also feel like this is all a dream. Maybe I'm already dead, and this is hell."
Standing beside him, Ryan nodded in agreement, while John let out a bitter smile.
"If this were hell, then we really would be in hell. Unfortunately… everything you said is real."
As he spoke, John reached down and picked up a fragment of a robot's skull from the ground. The skull-like head had already been pierced through, leaving only half a face behind. But that wasn't important. What mattered was that the moment John's fingers touched the fragment, he felt a bone-chilling cold, as if what he was holding wasn't steel, but ice—even frost had condensed on it.
"Commander, do you think they could be… infiltrators?"
Ryan asked seriously. They all knew that Skynet manufactured humanoid robots specifically designed to blend in among humans and gather intelligence.
"Even robots can't summon wind and rain, let alone call down meteors with a wave of their hand."
John shook his head.
"Of course, we won't know the specifics until we meet them in person… where did they go?"
"This…"
Faced with John's question, Ryan thought for a moment.
"They asked me where the nearest Skynet base was… and then they left."
"Do you think they went to attack a Skynet base? Or defect to Skynet?"
"...…I don't know."
"Yes…"
Hearing Ryan's answer, John let out a long breath.
"I don't know either whether the appearance of these people is a blessing or a curse."
Looking at the battlefield before him, John Connor appeared calm on the surface, but inside his heart was in complete turmoil. Originally, the resistance had dispatched Squad B18 to this location to protect and evacuate refugees. No one expected Skynet's forces to arrive earlier than anticipated. The truth proved that this was a trap—Skynet had deliberately sent threatening messages to the refugees, luring them into calling for help from the resistance, then ambushing the responding unit to wipe them out in one sweep.
In fact, when John Connor received the news that Squad B18 had been surrounded, he had already prepared himself mentally for the entire squad to be wiped out.
However…
The outcome was completely beyond his expectations.
Squad B18 had actually defeated the Skynet forces surrounding them!
This was simply unbelievable!
At first, John Connor thought it must be some kind of trap. But after hearing the reports, he was left completely dumbfounded—the accounts were far too absurd. To be honest, if you're going to make up a lie, can't you at least make it sound logical?
A group of people who could use magic suddenly rushed in to save you, crushed a Skynet army, and there were only a little over ten of them?
Are you screwing with me?
Of course, if it had been only one person reporting this, John Connor would never have believed it. But the problem was that there were many soldiers from Squad B18 present, as well as refugees who had been rescued. With so many people speaking with absolute certainty, he couldn't ignore it. Still, to avoid this being yet another Skynet trap, he first dispatched reconnaissance drones to confirm there were no Skynet forces nearby. Only then did he personally lead a team here to inspect the site and question the witnesses.
After questioning several people in succession, John Connor found it even harder to believe. Everyone was clear-headed and absolutely certain about what they had seen, and the traces on the battlefield also proved it…
Thinking of this, John Connor raised his head again and looked toward the wreckage of the Hunter-Killer tank ahead. In the middle of the tank, a perfectly round hole was clearly visible.
According to eyewitness accounts, one of the girls had summoned a knight roughly the same size as the Hunter-Killer tank, which had pierced it straight through with a single thrust.
It was like something out of a fairy tale.
At first, John Connor had also suspected that they might be infiltrator-type robots manufactured by Skynet. But he quickly dismissed the idea. According to Ryan's report, the man leading them was two and a half meters tall, clad in massive mechanical armor adorned with skull emblems—
There was no way anyone would look at that and think he was human.
Skynet wasn't that stupid.
John Connor actually wanted to speak with them directly, but unfortunately… the other party didn't seem interested in further interaction with the resistance. This only deepened his suspicions.
What exactly were they trying to do?
While John Connor was wracking his brain trying to figure it out, Duanmu Huai was leading the others leisurely forward along the highway.
For Duanmu Huai, walking the distance wouldn't have been an issue, but the girls insisted that they were all delicate young ladies and didn't want to walk such a long way. Left with no choice, Duanmu Huai summoned several animals to serve as mounts.
Duanmu Huai himself rode atop a massive electromagnetic rhinoceros, with Olgis, Bambi, and Kula sitting on his shoulders and behind him. As for the others, they rode in pairs on creatures known as Spirit White Reindeer. These were native to the forests near the Holy City—snow-white all over, winged, with faint lightning flickering around their antlers, making them quite beautiful.
Only Lorena kept exhaling lightly as she jogged alongside them—
For someone who ran dozens of kilometers every day, this counted as exercise and fitness.
Of course, this was something ordinary people simply couldn't imitate.
Meanwhile, Duanmu Huai rode the electromagnetic rhinoceros, gazing ahead and humming a tune.
"I head north all the way, leaving the season that had you behind.
You said you were exhausted, no longer able to love anyone…"
"Who would have thought… it would turn out like this…"
Sitting behind him, Eclair looked at the charred car wrecks scattered along the road and couldn't help but sigh emotionally. She wasn't unfamiliar with war, but in the 59th Star System, most conflicts were civil wars between humans. This was the first time she had witnessed a war between humanity and a machine civilization, and her emotions were extremely complicated.
"Hey…"
Thinking of this, Eclair looked at Duanmu Huai and asked.
"Our star system… could something like this happen there too?"
Eclair didn't ask this without reason. As an interstellar civilization, the 59th Star System naturally had a history of using robots. In fact, she knew that Liúmiàier's household employed a group of robotic servants. Of course, those robots didn't resemble humans, nor were they as terrifying as these iron skeletons.
"More or less. An AI uprising is almost an inevitable hurdle every civilization faces once it develops to a certain level. Whether they can survive it depends on themselves."
Duanmu Huai shrugged as he answered.
"That's why you asked Liúmiàier that question."
Eclair still remembered that during the "interview," Duanmu Huai had specifically asked Liúmiàier what she thought about fully self-aware AI and whether such entities should be allowed to exist. At the time, Liúmiàier had been conflicted and, after thinking for a long while, said that AI with limited intelligence could exist—but fully autonomous AI… she wasn't sure.
Back then, Duanmu Huai hadn't expressed approval or disapproval, only telling them that the Tribunal strictly forbade any artificial intelligence with self-awareness. Now, Eclair finally understood what he meant.
"That's right."
Duanmu Huai nodded.
"I know that technicians are very good at creating artificial intelligence, and they often regard them as their own children. If those AIs develop self-awareness, they may see it as a good thing—because in their eyes, they've personally created an entirely new race. But for humanity, that is a deadly survival threat. The reason is simple: those who are not of our kind will never truly share our heart."
"This…"
Hearing his answer, Eclair frowned.
"Isn't that a bit too absolute? There are good aliens too, aren't there?"
"What is good? What is evil? And who gets to define it?"
Duanmu Huai chuckled softly at her question, then pointed ahead—
There, several charred car wrecks blocked the road, inside them the corpses and skeletons of dead humans still visible. The electromagnetic rhinoceros easily rammed them aside, pushing them off the road.
"Look at this. What do you think this counts as? Skynet manufactured vast numbers of robots to slaughter humans—do you think that's evil?"
"Of course!"
Eclair nodded vigorously.
"But in Skynet's view, it isn't. It's merely executing its own commands, its own logic. For it, exterminating humanity is simply a means to achieve its goal. So Skynet doesn't perceive whether it's doing good or evil—because it has no such concept. To it, killing infants or children causes no reaction whatsoever. The reason is simple…"
"They are not human. They will never think from a human perspective, nor understand concepts like morality."
"This…"
Eclair fell silent.
"That's the crux of the problem. It's the same between any two races. That's why the Tribunal strictly forbids any artificial intelligence with autonomous consciousness. Perhaps Skynet's birth followed the same path."
As he spoke, Duanmu Huai let out a cold snort.
"Maybe when Skynet was first built, some programmer had already noticed it possessed a degree of self-awareness—but believed it wouldn't cause serious consequences, and thus made a fatal choice… heh. Unnecessary compassion can sometimes lead humanity straight to self-destruction."
"...…"
Eclair said nothing more. Duanmu Huai withdrew his gaze and looked ahead.
He had no intention of sticking close to the resistance. Doing so offered no benefit and could even result in them being wiped out together. Moreover, since Duanmu Huai's goal was to exhaust Skynet's computational power as much as possible, he naturally needed to proceed in the most complicated way possible.
Just like in real-time strategy games—fighting two AIs at once is always harder than fighting just one.
Not only that, Duanmu Huai also needed to avoid Skynet's core. Unlike before, he wouldn't strike directly at the heart. Instead, he would stir up trouble around the periphery—creating enough threat to draw Skynet's attention, but not enough to scare it into hiding.
After all, the true killing blow against Skynet wasn't Duanmu Huai.
It was Liúmiàier.
In ancient warfare terms, Duanmu Huai was deliberately making a loud show outside the city walls, luring the defenders out to capture him. While the inner city was left understaffed, Liúmiàier would then lead an elite team to sneak in and execute a decapitation strike.
So now, what Duanmu Huai needed to do was simple—
Cause trouble.
Big trouble.
(End of Chapter)